On a voyage from Napier, New Zealand, to Osaka, Japan, the refrigerated cargo vessel Chiricana crossed the equator, at 0210 hours on 15 March 1993, at longitude 157°45°E, on a course of 332° with Severe Tropical Storm 9301 Irma 854.6 nautical miles ahead.
In March 1993, Apple was a passenger aboard the Chiricana, a refrigerated cargo vessel transporting a cargo of high quality squash from New Zealand to Japan. The Chiricana made a detour from its predetermined course in an attempt to avoid the rapidly escalating tropical storm up ahead. The work documents and encodes into art the sequence of events that began a day out of Napier and finished a day before arrival to Osaka. Data generated by ship and storm has been collected from the ship’s logbook and satellite forecasting by Apple, then collated and schematised into the visual, aural and moving image components.
Ephemera
→ Billy Apple: Severe Tropical Storm 9301 Irma, 2006, exhibition card
Download
→ Billy Apple: Severe Tropical Storm 9301 Irma, 2015, publication
Further
→ Window Gallery – Billy Apple: Severe Tropical Storm 9301 Irma curated by Wystan Curnow, 2005